Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown (41 page)

Her husband, Myrle, told me that within the next week or so, four or five major things happened among their family and friends. Peg’s father-in-law had a heart attack and had to go to the hospital. One of their guests had a brain aneurysm. Another relative fell down a staircase and died. A fourth person died within weeks of the party. It seems too much for concidence, but these were all older people, making it possible their suffering was just happenstance.

Peg, though, told me she was worried it had something to do with her and the hotel. “I just started thinking, if there’s something here, did I bring it? Because I started seeing all these people that I love have all these horrible things going on in their lives.”

Whatever else might be going on, I was convinced she was absolutely genuine about that fear and her beliefs. To try to set her mind at rest, I explained to her that it was extremely rare for someone to be physically hurt as the result of a haunting. There were usually some
very
bad phenomena associated with hauntings in those cases, not just a couple of knocking sounds or even a few apparitions. In my experience, here there wasn’t any connection likely. But Peg seemed convinced it was linked to the fact that they’d all been at the party.

It was understandable. The thought that “I could have done this to them” can become so overpowering you don’t stop to think, “Well, they were all in my building because I
know
them all.” It’s hard to separate yourself from the underlying grief.

I held a regroup with the team and shared my concerns about Peg’s emotional state. I was also worried that all the psychics might be provoking things, fanning the flames. Katrina brought up the notion that they might also be putting ideas in Peg’s head, as we’d seen in “Haunted School House.” One thing was clear: While none of us were sure there were spirits present, Peg was.

I’d gotten in touch with some of the psychics who had previously been in the hotel, hoping to learn something more about the haunting, but here they only reinforced my bias. I’d asked one woman to come alone and conduct a séance for us on-camera, but she brought along a troop of followers, a group that seemed to hang on her every word.

There was a séance held. We had recorders and a thermal camera running. At one point, a woman claimed she was feeling extremely cold on her right side, but the thermal cam showed her right side was hotter. In the end, nothing much else came of it, so it didn’t make the episode. It did add to my general feeling of doubt about the haunting.

Part of the problem with the paranormal field is that because it has yet to be legitimized, or organized with any set of standards, it’s one of the few areas where any crazy or fraud can pronounce himself an expert. Without a standard, you have to rely on belief, which is what I feel Peg Knickerbocker was doing. While I do rely on my own faith, I don’t believe that anyone who walks up to me speaks for Jesus Christ just because they say so.

Since I was worried that Peg’s conviction might interfere with the objectivity of the investigation, for the first night I asked that she not participate in Dead Time.

Usually, we go into Dead Time with some sense of who we’re trying to contact. Here that just wasn’t the case. We didn’t discover much in the way of historical research, but not because we didn’t try. There were rumors the hotel was part of a train station where there was a fire, but we didn’t find much more.

For Dead Time, Serg, Josh, and Heather handled tech. I thought about spending time near the staircase Peg had singled out, but the area was too noisy. Even though this was a big location, the place was very creaky and we needed quiet areas to pick up activity. Instead, I decided to move around, starting on the first floor with Heather, while Eilfie and Katrina were on the third floor, another active spot.

As usual, we tried to communicate, particularly with the black cloud that appeared to Peg.

In an unusual turn, Katrina and Eilfie heard a voice, very clearly. What made this particularly strange was the fact that Eilfie didn’t generally experience things. Some people do; some don’t. I often don’t have experiences when others do. Here what they both heard had the cadence of a small sentence, but they couldn’t make out any words.

Not much was happening on the first floor, so Heather and I moved up to the second. I thought I heard a tapping in response to a question, but it was indistinct. Meanwhile, back on the third floor, Katrina was hearing the voice again, so Heather and I headed up there and we all tried to communicate.

Yet again, Katrina heard something that sounded like a woman speaking, very nearby. I didn’t know what to make of it. It was one thing to go into a house I thought might be haunted and get something, but another when I
didn’t
think the house was haunted. Even crazier was that we were able to hear the voices on the audio recording.

The next day, Josh and Serg presented the most distinct of the recordings. A voice, mumbling or speaking gibberish, could clearly be heard. It sounded to Katrina like the same voice, but fainter.

“It was the same pitch, but what I heard last night was really, really loud,” she said.

As I’ve mentioned, we’d experienced that before, hearing things loudly only to have the tape either not pick it up, or pick it up faintly. There are two theories I know about why that happens. The first is that the spirits are able to manipulate the recording equipment so they’re not recorded. But why would they? I can’t imagine so many spirits being so camera shy.

The second is that if the sound a spirit makes isn’t generated by normal means, it can’t necessarily be recorded by normal means. As I’ve experienced them, the knocks and bangs, especially in poltergeist cases, don’t exactly sound like knocks and bangs. They seem more like a distant popping with an echo, not quite natural. So some theorize that our recorders just aren’t designed to pick up whatever medium the sound is generated through. When a paranormal sound
is
recorded, it may be because at times the spirit does use physical means to manifest.

I don’t find any of that very satisfying. It strains my credulity to think a spirit can control what you can and can’t hear, and no research at all has been done on the subject.

Josh brought up radio interference as a possible explanation for what we’d recorded. The only problem was that we’d originally heard it audibly. I didn’t think they were faking anything, but I did wonder if there was a TV or sound system nearby. We couldn’t find anything.

That made it possible, in my mind, that the hotel did have
some
supernatural activity. Given the other explanations we soon came up with, I’m convinced Peg was misinterpreting its severity.

As we continued gathering data that afternoon, I called Peg’s sister, Kathy. She described how, at the top of the third floor, where we’d heard the voices, she’d seen a lady in white. Kathy said she couldn’t see her face because of a veil, but she also smelled a sweet perfume.

“She speaks,” Kathy said. “But I don’t understand what she’s saying. It’s like a foreign language.” That seemed to jibe with what we’d recorded.

Katrina also spoke with Amber, Peg’s daughter-in-law. She told us about an experience on the staircase. As she was walking down, she said, it sounded as if someone were running on the stairs right behind her. Amber kept looking back, but no one was there. She realized the house was old and creaky, but the sound kept getting louder and louder. She described a cold sensation down her back and felt pushed. By the time she reached the third step, she felt as if she’d fall.

Amber said she’d never had a paranormal experience before. I’m always a little surprised when someone says that. Everyone generally has
some
sort of ghost story to tell. Oh, my grandmother appeared to me, or something.

After that, the team spent some time looking for more natural explanations for the activity, and that night we regrouped to discuss them. Serg told us how the steps on the active staircase bent really low as he stepped on them, then snapped back loudly after he removed his foot. As he walked down, he was continually releasing pressure from the previous step. A second later, it would snap back, sounding like a footstep. As Serg sped up, so did the snapping, making it sound to him just like like someone was running behind him. Once someone is convinced something is running at them from behind, as Amber said she was, a cold shiver is a natural reaction.

I tried the steps myself. The snapping and cracking really did sound like someone following me.

Next we discussed the “choking” room. Josh explained that as they were monitoring our surveillance cameras, they saw Peg enter the room to make a phone call. She was afraid to sleep there, but with production occupying a lot of the house, it was one of the few places she could have some privacy. While she was there, she stirred up a lot of dust that floated around the camera lens.

“We saw clouds of dust,” Josh said. With poor air circulation, the dust could easily cause a sense of suffocation.

The apparitions couldn’t be debunked, since that was based on Kathy’s personal experience, nor could our EVPs, but they were faint and inconclusive. We had, however, come up with some solid natural explanations for some of the major recurring phenomena.

That night, CJ Sellers arrived for a psychic walk-through. She picked up on a female presence. In one room she said she kept getting the name “Katie” or “Katherine.” On the third floor, she sensed a female wearing a white gown, who had a servant feeling to her. Lastly, in the kitchen, she “heard” an entity warn we were not supposed to be back there, to keep out.

On the surface that seemed to confirm what Peg’s sister had seen, but I remained unimpressed. Every state and nearly every town has a “lady in white” story. My jaw is not going to drop because a psychic mentions a legend that’s been repeated over and over all across the country. Again, I respect the psychics we use on our show on a regular basis. Obviously I’m not going to invite someone back who I believe doesn’t have the potential of providing legitimate information. That said, despite working with her on two other cases during season one where she gave impressive results, I honestly felt that CJ didn’t give us a whole lot to go with this time.

After the walk-through, I introduced CJ to Peg. When I told her about the woman in white and the name “Katie,” Peg seemed to get terribly excited. She said she thought CJ had been in touch with Katie Hickey, a woman Peg believed worked there in the 1800s. If memory serves, Peg said she’d first heard the name from neighbors, but we were never able to confirm it.

When CJ described the angry entity near the kitchen, Peg gasped.

“Is it a spirit that shows itself before negative things happen in my life?” she asked.

CJ couldn’t answer, but Peg seemed convinced, saying, “It’s an angry spirit that
is
here.”

As always, CJ attempted to empower Peg. “Whatever angry spirit feels that you’re being intrusive, it really should be the other way around,” she told her. “It’s no different than a human being walking in here and pushing you and your family around. You wouldn’t put up with that. You shouldn’t put up with this.”

Peg listened, but I remained concerned that she was still blaming the spirits for negative events at the hotel, and took CJ’s reading as validation of that belief.

Then something happened that brought things to a head. On the afternoon of the last day, I was gathered with the team in tech HQ, reviewing the EVPs again, when the electricity suddenly went out. Peg was in the kitchen alone, in the area she’d seen the entity. Apparently, she was extremely excited by what happened.

“I told it what she told me to say,” Peg said. “She said to tell it to leave. This was right where it was and I did that. And this whole building went black! Maybe it
left
.”

When I suggested we look into the possibility of a power outage, Peg remained adamant that she’d gotten a direct response. She spoke with great emotion. “It could’ve just been a power surge, but maybe it was a way of confirming that I was telling it to get out.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I’m just concerned about making sure there’s rational thinking and making sure that you’re fine emotionally.”

“If a priest was standing here and it did that,
he’d
take it as a sign. I’m sure,” she said.

That took me aback. “You’re right. He would,” I told her. I admitted that if I were standing there at that moment, I’d suspect it was more than a power outage. I also insisted I’d still investigate whether or not it was something that could be explained.

But it seemed that Peg felt so good, so excited about what had happened, her mind was made up.

It was a very awkward moment for me. The result seemed positive, but to my mind she was making such a powerful logical leap.

Meanwhile, my team was already investigating. Serg was making calls to determine if the blackout was natural or possibly supernatural. Katrina and Josh had gone out to the local stores to see if their power went out as well.

I had the sense that as far as Peg was concerned, there was no point, but they did return with answers. Not only did several stores experience the same thing, they told us it was a common occurrence, and that power outages happened a few times a week. I was now certain it wasn’t paranormal.